page_title: Portrait of Mlle Rachel
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Portrait of Mlle Rachel / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: French actrice Rachel (Elisabeth Rachel Félix)Français&#160;: Portrait de la tragédienne Rachel. C'est au retour d'une tournée triomphale en Russie que Rachel incarna Catherine première de Russie, dans le drame en cinq actes d'Eugène Scribe La Czarine. Edmond Geffroy la peint parée de bijoux, dans un costume luxueux qui contraste avec l'austérité des tuniques des héroïnes classiques. Une autre version de notre portrait, également datée 1855, est conservée au Musée Carnavalet, Paris.
context_page_description: Portrait of Mlle Rachel is an oil painting on millboard by English artist William Etty, painted during the 1840s and currently in the York Art Gallery. It shows the tragic actress Élisa Rachel Félix, better known as Mademoiselle Rachel, at the time one of the most acclaimed actresses in France. The subject is not shown looking at the artist, but glancing anxiously out of the picture with tears in her eyes. The work was probably painted during one of Rachel's tours of London in the 1840s. It appears unfinished, suggesting that it was painted in a single sitting and Rachel did not return to give Etty the opportunity to complete it.
context_section_description: Although Etty painted a number of private portraits of his friends and acquaintances, he produced very few publicly exhibited portraits, fewer than 30 of which were shown during his lifetime. Mlle Rachel was not exhibited during his lifetime; it was possibly among the more than 800 paintings from his studio sold after his death. Etty died in November 1849 and soon fell out of fashion; by the late 19th century the values of all his paintings had fallen below their original prices.
  Mademoiselle Rachel remained a prominent figure in French society, and was the mistress of Alexandre Colonna-Walewski (with whom she had a son), Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte and Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte. On her death in early 1858, attempts by newspapers to publish pictures of her on her deathbed led to the introduction of privacy rights into French law, which have remained in place since.
  The ownership of Mlle Rachel in the years following Etty's death is not recorded. The painting was untitled, and its attribution as a painting of Rachel is based on its similarity to other depictions of her. It was bought by the York Art Gallery in 1961, where as of 2015 it remains. It formed part of a major exhibition of Etty's work in 2011–12. A pastel drawing also attributed to Etty, showing a much younger Mademoiselle Rachel, entered the collections of Sir Robert Witt (1872–1952), and on Witt's death was bequeathed to the Courtauld Institute of Art.
caption: Rachel by Edmond-Aimé-Florentin Geffroy (1855), three years before her death
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